1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of transmitting a multimedia messaging service message in a mobile communication system and, more particularly, to a method of transmitting a multimedia message, which includes the address of a multimedia messaging service server suitable for the type of a receiving terminal in a notice message and transmits the notice message to the receiving terminal, thus efficiently transmitting a multimedia message in various multimedia service environments.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a service defined by international standards, such as the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) Technical Specification (TS) 22.140 and 23.140. MMS allows transmission and reception of various types of multimedia messages, such as voice, image, audio and video data, as well as short messages between mobile terminals.
MMS proposed in the standards adopts store-and-forward messaging as a message transmission method. A multimedia message is transmitted with media contents, information required to describe the media contents, and address information required to identify a message recipient, which are encapsulated in the multimedia message. Such a multimedia message is transmitted to a Multimedia Messaging Service Center (MMSC) from a transmitting mobile terminal. The MMSC informs a receiving mobile of the receipt of the message. Thereafter, the multimedia message stored in the MMSC is transmitted to the receiving terminal in response to the request from a receiving user.
FIG. 1 is a view showing the construction of a typical network for transmitting a multimedia message.
A second generation user terminal 11 is connected to an MMS relay 19 through a second generation mobile network 13. A third generation user terminal 12 is connected to the MMS relay 19 through a third generation mobile network 14. Further, a roaming MMS user terminal 15 is connected to the MMS relay 19 through a mobile access network 16 and an Internet/Internet Protocol (IP) network 18. Further, an external server 23 and a wired email client 17 may be connected to the MMS relay 19 through the Internet/IP network 18. The MMS relay 19 is connected to both an MMS server 20 and a user database (DB) 22. The MMS server 20 is connected to a message storage unit 21 for storing therein a received multimedia message.
In such a network, a user creates a multimedia message to transmit the multimedia message to a specific receiving terminal. As described above, a multimedia message includes characters, moving or still images, voice and audio data. If the multimedia message is transmitted to the MMS server 20, the MMS server 20 stores the received multimedia message in the message storage unit 21, and then transmits to the receiving terminal a message indicating that the received multimedia message exists. Then, the receiving terminal accesses the MMS server using a message number and the address information of a server, which are included in the notice message. Thereafter, the MMS server reads out the multimedia message stored for a designated receiving terminal, and downloads the multimedia message to the receiving terminal. After the downloading of the multimedia message is completed, the receiving terminal releases the connection to the MMS server.
Multimedia messaging service is currently under development, and various MMS servers corresponding to the types of provided multimedia exist. For example, multimedia messaging service which only allows the transmission of still image such as a photograph was used in the early stage of the service. Recently even Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SML) MMS has developed. Beyond transmission of moving images, the SML MMS allows the transmission of text, audio and video data and enables the designation of various display functions as well. Further, according to the versions of mobile terminals, certain types of terminals are capable of reproducing only still images or moving images, and some others are capable of reproducing SML MMS messages.
However, there is a problem in that, if a multimedia message is created in a terminal capable of reproducing SML MMS messages and then transmitted to a terminal capable of reproducing only still images, the terminal capable of reproducing only still images cannot reproduce the SML MMS message. In order to solve the problem, respective MMS servers have media conversion functions. Each of the media conversion functions ascertains the specification of a receiving terminal and transmits multimedia message, which includes only the media data reproducible by the receiving terminal, to the receiving terminal. Therefore, respective MMS servers should be equipped with media conversion functions corresponding to the respective types of multimedia data so as to accommodate all the terminals having various specifications. This problem caused increase of the service charges.